Inherent in the idea of moving B2B buyers through the Inbound Marketing sales funnel is being able to herd your best prospects to the top of it.
There is really no such thing as too many good leads. The act of selling your product or service is a numbers game and, ideally, you want to stoke the funnel with buyers who are thirsty for the solutions your company offers.
Of course, the market has to be attracted to the funnel with great content that educates without filtering or discouraging conversions, yet provides qualified leads for your sales force. Here’s how a B2B trade press program that includes articles and PR can augment the content created by your blogs, social media and other content can jumpstart the process of building customer relations with as much of your target market as possible.
The key to a lead being interested in what you have to offer is quite simple. Does that buyer have a need?
That prospect might not be ready for your assistance at the moment they read your article. As Frank Isca pointed out last week, at any one time a only a small portion of your audience is in that position where they have become aware of a challenge or an opportunity that lies before them. Others, though, will have a need crop up later on, and when it does, a continuous B2B trade press program that includes articles and releases be ensure your company and product are in front of them.
An ongoing program that provides thought leadership editorial builds your place in your audience’s consciousness so that down the road, they think of you when they have a problem to be solved. Moreover, the constant presence in the pages of the trade press establishes your company’s legitimacy as a source.
While most means of digital communication are like a telephone, unless you can achieve that elusive jackpot of going viral, trade press PR is a megaphone. Though your blog is doing its job of building buyer relationships, a PR program can get your content out to hundreds of thousands. The benefit of a blog is that you can have relevant and useful content appear as frequently as you’re able, and a trade press program enables you to attract even more followers to read and track what you’re sharing on your website.
One time in my career I had the rare pleasure of meeting a plant manager who was given carte blanche when it came to buying for his facility. No checking with the front office. He was mandated to buy whatever he felt his operation needed.
But for just about every other company on the planet, the customer touchpoints include users, influencers, buyers, deciders, and gatekeepers; in the case of manufacturers, that might be engineers, safety managers, plant managers and purchasing managers. They all read different trade publications, and it’s best to reach as many of them as possible so that when the buying process becomes active, they’re all aware of who you are and what you can do for them. For a fraction of the cost of paid advertising, a B2B PR program enables each member of the buying team to get to know you through the publications that reach their industries and functions.
When assembling articles and releases for the trade publications, huddle with your SEO consultant to create a list of crucial keywords and to determine the best practices on how to use them. Given the reach that a trade press program provides, the ability to utilize long-tail keywords, and the time readers spend on the page, every article and release can be an ideal keyword carrier and help you rank high in search.
Your potential market is the one that gets fed into funnel, which processes it into sales gold. With the help of a PR program built on continuity, you’ll be able to dig deeper to find these leads – and have a better chance of these leads finding you.
Topics: Content Marketing
